Blappy wrote:
OK Mr Smarty smart.... Enough talk. Lets see your design. DEC, HWR MKII, and myself have threads showing actual work. (Well two of us do anyways) It's your turn now. Make us a tank that is a tank but does not look like a tank as we think of a tank in the tank sense. Tanks!

Here's a design based on one of my favorite shapes. It started as a Cameron-esque transatmospheric landing boat, then turned into a post-ST:TMP starship for my Starfleet Museum website. Here I've turned it into a hover tank. This is a WIP.

The main weapons are dual beam/particle weapons powered by vertically mounted accelerator rings. The crew of two sit in semi-reclining couches on each side of the gun. They will also have hatches, perhaps with antipersonnel weapons (eg, machine gun turrets). The hull is peppered with sensor eyes.

The drive system is repulsor-based drive/lift device in twin pods at the rear. Something spins inside. I don't understand the details, but it involves high-level physics rather than chemistry. Probably similar to what is used by a Bladerunner Spinner.

This AFV operates from ground level to about 20 feet above the ground. Since it's airborne and doesn't rely on tracks or wheels to push it along, it can reach speeds of 200 mph or more, which are useful for both attacks and evasion. I don't think a speed of less than 60 mph should be part of the definition of a hover tank, just because that's the top speed of present day AFVs. It can hide behind hills to pop up and fire, then can scoot to hide behind another obstacle. It can also charge while keeping its main weapon on target.

I've also found some similar designs that would work as turretless hovertanks.

Lunadiver Stingray: A Kow Yokoyama Maschinen Krieger design that would make a cool hover tank. Just put a big gun in the nose and remove the bit hanging off the bottom.http://www.hlj.com/product/HSGMK-03

Last edited by Masao on Mon Jan 25, 2010 12:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

I'd call it an assault gun as the main armament appearsss* to be
fixed in the foward arc, but other than that, its a sharp looking
design. You do favor the curvaceous in your aesthetic, don't you?

I agree with you about FichtenFoo's Martian hovertank, but the
Lunadiver is a space craft pure and simple. There are both hovertanks
and Grav vehicles in the MaK universe, the Nutrocker ( Nutcracker )
and the Falke being the best repesctive examples.

I don't mean to seem like I'm splitting hairs over the Lunadiver. I
mentioned the Traveller RPG in an earlier post, and a bit from
there has always stuck with me. Traveller defines societies
( in part ) in terms of tech levels, with anti-gravity appearing about
TL 9. In a parralell survey of the development of military technology
the writers of the game said that about TL 13, grav tanks "become
inditinguishable from gunships", which I take to mean helicopter
gunships, and if you want to look for a true "hovertank" well, there
you are. The main difference is in the amount of armor that a
chopper can carry vs. a ground vehicle, but as materials technology
advances, that distinction is going to become more blurred as well.

Well, enough of my long winded musings-Good luck with the build!

* Sorry, its the Gorn in me-surfaces at the oddest times.

The Dragon never sleeps. But he does like a spot of tea, now and then.

--would use Star Wars type repulsor lift that can only get you a few meters off the surface--using ground-field effects. Now the fighter-tank should use full anti-gravity--(what a swoop bike is to a speeder bike, I guess)--it is classified in the wiki as using only repulsor lift--but seems too agile to not also have some anti-gravity: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/TX-130T_Fighter_Tank

I would say that what most folk think of as a hovertank is something that can't fly all that high--isn't quite as agile as the SW fighter-tank, and yet is still a bit more futuristic than wheeled or tracked vehicles. The Tron tank design looks like a hover tank as is. Then too Masaos design looks even faster than the slab-like fighter tank from SW. Other designs can be found on www.dogpile.com

Dr. Yo wrote:
I'd call it an assault gun as the main armament appears to be fixed in the foward arc... .

One of the points I argued in the original hover tank thread some months ago was that *if* the hull is fully mobile and *if* the gun can be trained on the target while the tank is moving, a turret is an unnecessary expenditure of weight and mechanical complexity. You can mount a bigger gun in a hull than in a turret. It's sort of like a fighter plane: some turreted fighters were built, but fixing the guns and moving the whole plane was found to be a better option.

Dr. Yo wrote:
....I agree with you about FichtenFoo's Martian hovertank, but the Lunadiver is a space craft pure and simple. There are both hovertanks and Grav vehicles in the MaK universe, the Nutrocker ( Nutcracker ) and the Falke being the best repesctive examples.

I mentioned the Lunadiver Stingray as an example of a kit that *could* be made into a nice tank, as long as you completely disregard its intended role in the SF3D universe. Just put a big gun its nose, scape off all the bits hanging off the bottom, stick some pioneer gear and Jerry cans to the hull, and remove or reorient the engine bells.

Masao
I like the thought your putting into your design. I agree ( and I've seen hovercraft demonstrating the same movement you describe) that a HT can turn on its axis while maintaining the same direction of travel.

It would need a recoiless weapon though to overcome the effects of firing perpendicular to the direction of travel. However I wonder if a turret is in itself a problem as todays Russian hovercraft have turrets on their decks, surely if the craft is travelling forward and the left hand turret is traversed over the left side and it fires, the recoil would try and turn the craft away to the right? I assume that the engines and rudders are strong enough to over come it, and could be used in the same way by a hovertank.